


coming home, come unfold babe

by babyangel12



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: M/M, just a whole lot of being in bed together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 10:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21098210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyangel12/pseuds/babyangel12
Summary: a tale of three beds in theo and boris' shared lives.





	coming home, come unfold babe

"and what is the vocabulary for that, how can words deliver love-- I say it is raining over the mountains and mean I am rolling onto my side to fall asleep next to you."

from "Hiding Again in London" by Adam Day.

*

The first bed that Theo shares with Boris, which he comes to think of as their bed, Dorito crumbs and dog hair and crusty socks and all, is a basic, bland twin in Theo’s room in Vegas. Most nights they’re sprawled out across the cheap Walmart bedspread, drunk and high and staring at the ceiling. 

This one is no different: Popper is curled in a ball next to them and Thom Yorke’s mumbling is playing loud and tinny through Theo’s headphones. The left earbud is tucked into Boris’ ear, the right in Theo’s, and the cord is tangled in so many knots that there’s only a few inches of slack in the wire. 

The knots give Theo a plausible excuse for lying so close to Boris though, so he pretends to be too lazy to disentangle them. His nails are too short to pick them open, his fingers too clumsy to keep a hold of them, they’re just going to get fucked up again anyway! Theo reasons, partly to himself, but mostly with the invisible but omnipresent audience in his head that watches him lay with Boris, seeing every time they glance at each other, that their hands brush, that they inevitably end up curled up together, deeply asleep in the middle of the night. 

Boris exhales, slow and soft, and Theo looks out of the corner of his eye to watch his skinny chest rise and fall. Something warm burns deep in his stomach as he stares down the length of Boris’ body, at his closed eyes and long, dark lashes, at his stained black t-shirt, at his dirty fingernails scratching absentmindedly behind Popper’s ear. 

Theo suddenly wants so intensely for Boris’ hand to be in his hair, stroking the back of his neck, carding through the grown out ends that probably need a wash. He swallows that feeling down like bile in his throat, shifting onto his side so that he is physically incapable of looking at Boris. He can’t do that, ask for Boris’ touch like that - not yet, anyway; it’s barely 9pm, the light is still on, they’ve sobered up to the point that he can’t pass it off as a drunken, stoned joke. 

“Potter,” Theo hears Boris murmur, voice surprisingly close to his ear, body suddenly warm and pressed against his back. Theo holds his breath. “You pulled out my fucking headphone, you prick. Roll back over.”

Theo huffs out a half-laugh and rolls as he is told, but he ends up all of five inches away from Boris’ nose. His eyes are liquid and dark in the dim lamplight and his hair too needs a wash - the curls have gone past the glossy, healthy end of the spectrum to just plain greasy. 

Boris finds the offending earbud in the tangled sheets and replaces it in his ear. His breath is warm and beery in Theo’s face, which he should probably find gross, and yet. He should probably shift back slightly, or get up to go brush his teeth which are currently feeling distinctly furry . But more than that, Theo really doesn’t want to break the fragile atmosphere of this moment. He wants to lay in it, with Boris, in this bed until it’s morning.

Theo falls asleep like that, light still on and earbud still in. Boris stays awake a while after, body curved around towards Theo like a sickle. Eventually he pulls the headphone gently out of Theo’s ear and slides out of the bed to switch the light off. In darkness, they reach for each other. Boris’ chin tucks into Theo’s shoulder blade, his arm wraps around him and his fingers splay over his stomach, instinctive and familiar.

*

The second bed they share is in Antwerp. It is king-sized, elegantly draped and completely anonymous. Boris has slept in it maybe twice, leaving the room sterile and quiet like the hotel bed in Amsterdam. It truly feels like a pocket of a different universe they’ve mistakenly stumbled into in the aftermath of the Goldfinch’s rescue - one where Theo is allowed to finally scratch that decade old itch.

He reasons with himself this time around that realistically, once he leaves this apartment, back to the city and Hobart & Blackwell and uncomfortable dinners with the Barbours, he’ll never return to it. Once he goes, the sheets will be changed on the bed that doesn’t belong to him and there won’t be a trace - what happens there is, in a sense, erasable, and so why should he not let himself have it, just this once. 

That’s what Theo tells himself, at least, but the reality is that even though the sheets are changed and the hickeys on his neck fade, the memory of Boris’ body, lean and muscled now as an adult, pressing him into the mattress is indelible. 

They start fucking one night without actually really talking about it - no fanfare, no declaration, just Boris rolling one way in the dark and Theo rolling to meet him with his mouth. They kiss for a second, almost chaste, like a 1950s sitcom couple kissing goodnight before slipping into their separate beds. That fractures a split second later when Boris groans against Theo’s face and parts his lips to coax Theo’s own mouth wide open, sliding his tongue in and sucking at his lips. 

They fuck hard and desperate and fast, for the most part. Boris pushes Theo’s long legs apart and slides them up, making sure that he can hook an ankle over his shoulder and cradle Theo’s hips in his palms so he can slide a fraction deeper. Theo’s face burns and his whole body flushes right down his chest as he lays exposed, legs wide open with Boris kneeling in between them. 

Boris keeps his hand hooked under Theo’s knee but runs the other down his bare chest, fingers splayed, skimming over every hair and mole and muscle like he’s trying to memorise what he’s touching. 

One particular time (that Theo can't stop his brain from revisiting even when he's back in New York, back into his life), Theo is sitting on the bed after a shower with just a towel wrapped around his hips, scrolling through the messages in his work email with a feeling of blank, phantom exhaustion over the many, many changelings he will have to finagle away from their unwitting owners. Boris walks into the bedroom and shut the door, eyes roving over his bare chest and legs. He pulls Theo's phone out of his hand and drops it with a clatter on the bedside table, and climbs over him, tipping a hand under his chin to tilt Theo's gaze up towards him. Boris looks him dead in the eye as he leans in to bite his neck and kiss his mouth. He yanks unceremoniously at the knot at Theo's waist and kisses his way down his chest, licking at the drops of water left on his stomach. 

Boris is so sure of himself as he kneels between Theo's spread legs and slides his mouth around his cock - the image of it in Theo's memory is enough to make the muscles in his thighs tense. He holds Theo firmly in place as he trembles, keeping up a steady rhythm and suction that makes Theo's toes curl. He smiles as he pushes him onto his back and yank him forward so that he can dip his head lower, sliding his tongue over Theo's balls and to the sensitive skin beyond. The first time he put his mouth there, Theo twitched so hard that Boris had to jerk away to avoid getting a hip bone to the face - he grinned though when he realized that Theo was about thirty seconds away from coming. 

But when Boris really wants to get Theo out of his head, pull him away from the looming threat of real life and into the bedroom right here and right now, he urges Theo over onto his stomach and heaves him up by the hips so that he can get his mouth on him from behind. That truly makes Theo feel like he’s in a different universe - there’s no way in his previous version of reality, where he’s engaged and employed and pretending not to be in stolen possession of a priceless, centuries old piece of art, that he’s actually trembling under Boris’ tongue - just in this one weird anomalous pocket of existence. 

In this particular universe, Theo is allowed to get loud and shaky and whiney as Boris hauls him back against his face, as Boris squeezes at the soft parts of Theo’s inner thighs and ass, as Boris presses his jaw hard against Theo’s perineum and his tongue strokes over his hole, slow and purposeful and repetitive. He makes it wet to the point that Theo can hear it, as well as feeling it dripping down between his legs. 

When Boris pulls back so that he can push into Theo from behind, braced tight over his back, his chin is shiny with spit and his eyes are blown wide. They don’t really talk directly to each other much while it happens, aside from a few moans of faster, harder, and right there when it really gets good. Even though the slap of their bodies and their breathing and the rhythmic thump of the bed head against the wall fill most of the room, Theo swears that sometimes, he can still hear Boris mutter half-intelligible sentences and pet names in Russian against his shoulder blade. In the continuation of this tiny universe, this Theo would probably dig out his old Conversational Russian skills to try and understand what it is that Boris is telling him. As it is in the real world, he knows that he can’t.

*

The third time they share a bed that becomes theirs is the one they find together while looking for furniture for the apartment that they end up sharing in the Village, years down the line, long after Kitsey and Theo quietly dissolve their engagement and Pippa marries Everett in a beautiful, tiny chapel in London and Hobie officially retires but unofficially comes down to the shop every day. 

Realistically, Boris could afford his own place, but regardless he ends up gradually and systematically moving in, without Theo really noticing. One day, he’s alone, and the next, Boris is back in the city “on business” and is back in Theo’s life. Boris is sick of hotels, wants to see Popchyk, is desperate to cook his own meals, so Theo reasons that he can stay. The thing is, he then doesn’t leave. 

They slide back so quickly into - whatever it is between them - in a heartbeat. Often Theo comes home from the shop to find Boris in the kitchen, crooning along to some terrible 80s song, the place smelling like freshly-made dough and spices and wine and herbs. They talk in the kitchen and sit next to each other on the couch and eventually migrate back into sharing a bed, a bathroom sink in the morning, a dresser full of clothes and a wardrobe lined with several pairs of quietly expensive leather boots.

The first time Boris comes in at night with a takeaway from the Thai place down the block and kisses him hello at the door, Theo blinks and lets his universe shift. He knew, for the longest time, that this was coming - that one day all his concessions would pile up and fracture the veneer he had built himself around what he had with Boris. It’s at this moment that Theo knows where he is, who he’s with and who he is with perfect clarity. 

They go to bed that night and kiss again, and again, and again.

Theo finds a huge, classic antique nest of a bed one day while he’s working and sends a photo to Boris, with a question mark. Boris appears in half an hour, dark sunglasses perched on his face and two coffees in his hand. He takes one look at the bed, smiles and winks at Theo and tells him to buy it, but maybe also they could enlist Gyuri and a couple of his other guys to manoeuvre it up to their apartment.

As soon as it’s fully installed in their place, the bed becomes an oasis. The first night, they go to bed and sit up together reading, like they’re in their 90s. Eventually, Theo flicks the lamps off and instinctively curls into Boris like he has so many times before. Boris kisses the arch of his eyebrow in the dark, and trails kisses down the side of his face until he reaches the corner of Theo’s mouth.

And then they’re just lying in bed facing each other under the covers in the dark, kissing and kissing, warm orange light from the street outside filtering in. It’s lush and quiet and smells like them - the adult version with washed hair and clean sheets and the soft, smokey scent of the bougie, overly expensive candle that Boris picked out and that Theo loves.

It’s sweet and soft until Boris starts tracing his tongue over Theo’s lower lip and Theo feels that sudden roller-coaster adrenaline arousal drop in the pit of his stomach and the ensuing burn and just goes with it. It takes one push of his hips for him to straddle Boris and slot their bodies together. They are both quickly aware of how good it feels to rub up against each other through their pyjama bottoms but Boris’ hand are even faster as it slides past the waistband of Theo’s pants so that he can grab a handful of his ass and knead, while toying with the hair at the back of his neck with the other. 

Theo is leaning right over Boris’ chest, completely flush, which makes it slightly more difficult for Boris to get both of them naked but he makes a valiant effort, anyway. He grinds his dick against the muscles of Theo’s stomach and snakes a hand between them so that he can grasp them both together and jerk them off at the same time. 

Theo’s mouth is hanging open as he bucks down into Boris’ hand and his face is flushed pink and he hasn’t got his glasses on and his normally tidy hair is sticking straight up in parts and he’s making these little undignified noises. Boris is staring up at him, mouth hanging open and a furrowed line drawn between his brows. On a moan he gasps out “I love you, fuck, I love you,” while digging his nails into Theo's ass cheek. Something catches in Theo's chest, and he stops rocking for a second and looks down with a semi-surprised smile. 

“Oh, you love me huh?” he murmurs, running his hands across Boris’ chest to his collarbone and up to his jaw. 

“Yes. Shut up Potter. You love me too,yes?” Theo is grinning down at him and nods, this dumb, uncontrollable toothy little smile spreading across his face, so Boris pushes his hips up and starts rocking against him again, holding on tight to Theo’s waist just to control the movement, crossing his legs under Theo so he can pull him even closer. Theo hauls him in and dig his nails into his shoulder and cries out when he comes into Boris’ hand and onto his stomach. Boris follows soon after, gasping out a warbled “Theo,” in the darkness.

They lie together after in the centre of the bed. Theo’s head is resting on Boris’ chest and they have ridiculously huge soft pillows and a duvet cover that they picked out together. 

In the morning Theo wakes up, kisses Boris’ neck until he opens his eyes, and says quietly - “I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> [this](https://www.selfridges.com/GB/en/cat/diptyque-feu-de-bois-scented-candle_342-2000170-SCENTEDCANDLEFEUDEBOIS/) is the candle i pictured boris buying!
> 
> the title is from lykke li's i know places.
> 
> i hope you enjoy this - i love writing these two.
> 
> shoutout to lovisa who heard the earliest draft of this over whatsapp.


End file.
